New teaching standards anger South Dakota group

Aug. 22, 2013

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Sonia Ohling sat Thursday night in the back row of a meeting on the Common Core Standards, overwhelmed with emotion.

Her oldest son begins kindergarten this year, and with new math and English language arts standards now being implemented into K-12 schools throughout the state, she said she’s “very concerned about my son’s education.”

Her fears were typical among a group of 35 educators and parents who gathered at the Main Branch Library in Sioux Falls for an event hosted by South Dakotans Against Common Core.

“Common Core is something that I’m very passionate about because I think it is wrong on so many levels,” Ohling said. “What bothers me the most is that so many people have never heard of this and they have no idea how this is affecting our future and the future of our kids.”

Mary Scheel-Buysse, who leads the group, said the purpose of the meeting was to inform parents about the changes taking place in their schools.

The initiative was developed by a nonprofit group supported by state governors and education officials. So far, 45 states have agreed to adopt the standards, which supporters say will raise the rigor of classroom instruction and provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn.

Many parents who attended the meeting were looking for answers as to what needs to happen to keep the standards from further implementation.

However, the South Dakota Board of Education voted in 2010 to adopt the standards, and all schools in the state are expected to have implemented them this year. The state already has committed $6.7 million to training teachers for the new standards.

Nancy Wegleitner first learned of the Common Core Standards last June while watching conservative TV host Glenn Beck. She said what is scary about the standards is how little the public knows about them.

A week into school, she withdrew her son to home-school him. When she told people the reason, no one knew what she was talking about.

Indeed, a PDK Gallup poll released this week found almost two-thirds of Americans had never heard of the Common Core, and most of those who say they know about them neither understand nor embrace them.

Wegleitner said that as more parents get informed about the program, schools will see more people upset.

“I’ve had one parent tell me right now that her son is an eighth-grader and he was supposed to be in accelerated math and they dropped him down to general math this year,” she said. “It’s starting to upset some parents because they’re starting to see how these standards are affecting their kids.”

Scheel-Buysse, who was the main speaker during the meeting, thinks implementation of the new standards violate multiple federal laws and that the standards are far from what the education system needs.

“Common Core is the outgrowth of everything that has been wrong in education for the last 50 years, like No Child Left Behind, School to Work and Goals 2000,” she said.

At the end of the meeting, Scheel-Buysse provided attendees with forms to be taken to state lawmakers next year in hopes of persuading them to turn back from the standards.